Every now and then, a simple post online grabs you by the collar and refuses to let go. The one that did it recently was barely a sentence long. No deep explanation. No emotionally manipulative soundtrack. Just a quiet punch to the gut:
“Some of us destroy our happiness because we don’t believe we deserve it.”
That line lingered like smoke. It wasn’t new. It wasn’t groundbreaking. But it was brutally accurate, especially in trans spaces where despair sometimes becomes a default setting. Even when life is going well, even when things are finally looking up, some of us feel an almost gravitational pull back toward the dark. And half the time we don’t even realize we’re doing it.
The author of that post probably didn’t intend to call out an entire community, but it landed on a raw nerve because it described a pattern many of us quietly recognize. The tendency to sabotage good things the second they feel too real. The instinct to retreat into worst-case scenarios because hope feels like a setup. The habit of assuming the universe will punish us for wanting more than survival.
People outside the trans community often misunderstand this. They think our pessimism is drama or hypersensitivity or social contagion. They never consider the decades of conditioning. The years of hearing we are wrong, unwanted, or ridiculous. The subtle humiliation of existing in a world that still thinks our happiness is up for debate.
When you grow up absorbing that message, the dark starts to feel like home.
But this article is not here to shame you for struggling. This is a conversation about recognizing the pull of the dark, understanding how we accidentally chase it, and learning how to walk toward the light again even when it feels unfamiliar.
Why The Dark Feels Safe Even When It Hurts
People think of “the dark” as depression or sadness or dramatic movie-style hopelessness. But in everyday life, the dark is quieter and much more subtle. It lives in the way you speak to yourself. It hides in the beliefs you carry. It slips into your decisions before you even know it is happening.
The dark is not loud. It whispers. And it sounds like:
“You’re too late to fix your life.”
“You’re not attractive enough to be loved.”
“You’ll never pass, and everyone knows it.”
“People tolerate you, but they don’t admire you.”
“You have already failed, so why try again.”
That kind of thinking doesn’t appear out of thin air. It grows from things we’ve been taught. Every time society treats transgender happiness as unrealistic. Every time a news cycle reduces us to a political bargaining chip. Every time younger transitioners share their joy online, older transitioners quietly feel like they missed the last train home. Every time people talk about gender, beauty, or worthiness like they are competitions with only a handful of winners.
You internalize enough of that, and something strange happens. You begin to find comfort in the dark because it’s predictable. It never disappoints you because you already know how heavy it feels. When you believe happiness is impossible, you stop reaching for it. You sabotage your attempts before they even begin. You call it realism, but it is fear wearing a very practical outfit.
The dark is familiar. The light is not. And we tend to prefer the familiar, even when it hurts.
How Trans Communities Accidentally Normalize Darkness
Trans spaces save lives. They offer validation, solidarity, safety, and understanding that is almost impossible to find elsewhere. But these spaces can also become echo chambers of pain where survival stories overshadow hopeful ones.
Many of us learn to bond through our worst moments. We share the experiences that broke us. We compare scars. We discuss dysphoria, misgendering, bigotry, loneliness, rejection, harassment, and fear. We feel understood because others have lived it too. That connection is valuable and real.
But after enough time, it is easy to mistake shared pain for identity. You begin to believe the trans experience is defined only by struggle, that happiness is reserved for only a rare few, and that aiming for joy makes you naive.
The deepest trap is not the pain itself. It is the belief that the pain is permanent.
People rarely discuss their successful days because joy feels too private or too delicate to share. We don’t want others to feel left behind. We don’t want to sound like we’re bragging. So the darkness gets amplified while the light stays quiet.
And in that silence, many people fall into patterns that make their pain feel inevitable.
Recognizing The Ways We Sabotage Ourselves
Self-sabotage doesn’t look dramatic. It doesn’t look like self-destructive mania. It looks like ordinary life viewed through a distorted filter.
You might sabotage your happiness by gravitating toward friendships that reinforce your worst insecurities. If you believe you are difficult to love, you might subconsciously choose people who treat you that way. Their behavior affirms what you already believe, and so you mistake familiarity for truth.
You might sabotage yourself by minimizing every bit of progress you make. Maybe you learned a new makeup technique or found a hairstyle that flatters you or gained confidence at the gym or finally started hormones or got a gender marker changed. Instead of celebrating, you dismiss it with a quick “It’s not enough yet.” Your wins evaporate the moment they appear.
Comparison is another powerful saboteur. Watching younger transitioners thrive while you feel decades behind can make you believe your story is already over. But their timeline is not your timeline. Their starting point says nothing about your ending point.
Some people sabotage themselves by expecting kindness to be temporary. When affection or love or validation comes your way, you brace for the moment it disappears. You keep emotional distance so that when loss comes, you can claim you were “prepared.” You mistake emotional detachment for strength when it is actually fear dressed up like control.
And sometimes the sabotage is quieter. You avoid opportunities because trying feels risky. You tell yourself you are not ready. You turn down good things because the dark convinced you happiness will always boomerang back into disappointment.
These patterns don’t make you weak. They make you human. But if you do not recognize them, they will keep you anchored to a version of life you no longer want.
Light Is Not The Opposite Of Dark. It Is The Choice That You Make Every Day.
People often think choosing the light means becoming some relentlessly cheerful Barbie-core motivational poster. That isn’t realistic. The light is not about pretending the dark doesn’t exist. The dark is always there. The difference is direction.
Choosing the light means refusing to surrender your agency to old wounds. It means acknowledging your pain without letting it dictate your future. It means allowing yourself to want something better even if you’re scared of wanting anything at all.
The light asks you to believe you are capable of more than survival. This is not because your life becomes magically easier, but rather because you stop feeding ideas that were never yours to begin with.
For trans adults especially, hope feels dangerous because it contradicts everything the world taught us. If the dark says, “You will always be behind,” the light says, “You’re not done growing.” If the dark says, “No one will ever love you,” the light says, “You haven’t met everyone yet.” If the dark says, “Your best days are gone,” the light says, “You have no idea what is coming.”
The light is not a delusion. It is effort. It is uncomfortable. It is vulnerable. It is a muscle you build through repetition until one day it stops feeling forced.
When Choosing The Light Feels Fake
This happens to everybody. You attempt positivity, and it feels ridiculous. You try self-compassion, and it feels cringe. You convince yourself that you are entitled to happiness, and your mind responds with a dismissive, mocking laugh.
This does not mean the light is wrong. It means the dark has been in your seat for a long time.
Think of it like learning a new instrument. The first attempts sound like a wounded goose. But you keep practicing because you know skill develops with repetition, not instant mastery. The light is exactly the same. It feels fake until it feels possible. Then it feels possible until it feels real.
If you stick with it, the day will come when the dark feels foreign instead of familiar.
Learning To Stop Following The Dark
Pulling yourself out of the dark isn’t a single decision. It’s a series of small actions you repeat until the pattern shifts. The pivot comes from noticing how often your initial reaction is shaped by old pain.
You pause when your brain tells you to expect the worst. You challenge the automatic thought that assumes failure. You soften your internal voice when it tries to be cruel. You let yourself enjoy things without immediately dismissing them.
And you allow joy to be uncomplicated. You embrace the fact that happiness does not require perfection. You let good things grow instead of smothering them the second they appear.
One of the most radical acts for many trans people is admitting that happiness is not only possible but also deserved. You deserved it at five years old. You deserved it at fifteen. You deserved it at forty-five. You deserve it today.
Your worth was never conditional. The world tried to convince you otherwise. The dark tried to keep you quiet about it. But it was never true.
Reclaiming The Light Before The Dark Reclaims You
Let’s be honest. The dark is seductive. It promises safety because disappointment becomes predictable. But there is no growth in predictability. There is no joy in a story that is already decided.
The light provides you something terrifying: possibility. And possibility means change. Change means uncertainty. Uncertainty means taking chances your past self never would have risked.
You may not trust the light yet. That is understandable. But you do not have to trust it fully to move toward it. You only have to trust it enough to take one step.
Then another. Then another.
That accumulation of steps becomes a path. And before you realize it, the dark is behind you instead of next to you.
The Bottom Line
Survival mode teaches you that anything beyond minimal functioning is dangerous. But survival is not a life. It is a holding pattern. It keeps you from drowning, but it does not take you anywhere.
You are allowed to want magic. You are allowed to want connection. You are allowed to want beauty and romance and joy and adventure and softness and peace. You are allowed to want ease, and you are allowed to want excitement. You are allowed to want a future that does not look like your past.
The dark will try to convince you that wanting more makes you greedy or unrealistic or naive. But craving the light is not a flaw. It is one of the most human instincts you have.
It doesn’t matter how late you start. It doesn’t matter what you have lost. No matter what you have been told. You still get to chase the light.
And every time you do, you rewrite the story of your life in a direction the dark never wanted you to imagine.
